This is a common question I’ve seen on my Twitter that I’ve decided to address.

The phase 3 of Malygos is difficult for players the first time they run into it. It generally takes a number of wipes before players figure out what to actually do and how to do it.

When I explain this fight to pickup groups or other guilds, I try to keep things as simple as possible.

Setting up

As phase 2 ends, the entire instance is going to fill with bright, seizure inducing colors.

To make sure everyoneÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s in sync and starting in the right area, I get everyone to snap and move down to the southern side of the platform. Look on your minimap for this if you have to. I ensure everyone stays together as much as possible.

Note the red dot in the diagram above.

As the platform breaks apart and your raid falls, see to it that no one touches their flight controls. Let Malygos settle down and park himself. Once he does that, the raid leader cues the raid to climb.

Climb directly up until youÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re at head level with Malygos. For the remainder of the fight, this is where youÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ll be on the Z axis of things. You donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t have to worry about climbing or diving. You and your raid are only going to focus on strafing.

Movement

Note the four dark blue (navy) circles on the map above. Those are going to be the 4 points everyone will navigate to.

Now that the raid is head level and starting at the south position, youÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re going to move towards the east, north, west, before heading back to the south.

In other words, fly counter-clockwise in 90 degree increments. You don’t have to do this constantly. Only move when the raid gets hit with a static field (30 yard AoE damage spell). See a static field? Move east. Another static field? Head north.

For the DPS

Even though IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ll have anywhere from 6 to 7 healers for phases 1 and 2 on Malygos, IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ll specifically jump into the play on phase 3 to help DPS. I like to get another healer to do it with me. This drops healing drakes down to 4 but increases attacking drakes by 2 (or having a net result of 20 firebreathing drakes).

Flame spike: Damaging fire attack that awards a combo point at the cost of 10 energy

Engulf in flames: Finisher that adds a DoT effect. The more combo points, the longer the duration of the DoT. Can stack.

As you can see, the more Flame Spikes you cast, the more DoTs you can add and the longer they last. It takes a while to build up momentum.

For the sake of simplicity and those doing it the first time, I suggest going for a 1-1-1-2 rotation.

On a side note, I think the guild best is currently at 22 stacks. CanÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t remember if it was one of my Warlocks, a Hunter, or Kimbo (Ret Pally) who pulled it off.

For the healers

First thingÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s first. What you may realize is that your raid frames are going to be useless! They donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t show the health of the drakes! There are a few addons that combat this, but IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢m going to assume that you completely forgot to get them.

Press Shift V. This brings up healthbars on to the screen. At this point, youÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re going to be relying on heads up healing. In other words, youÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ll have to filter out the players with low health bars, target them, and heal them.

Revivify: 10 second HoT. Each application adds 1 combo point. This can stack up to 5 times.

Life Burst: This is an AoE healing finisher which increases your healing done by 50% (and lasts longer per combo point). If you have maxed out combo points (5 of them), the spell will heal around 15000 across all friendly targets within 60 yards.

This is like extreme whack-a-mole.

You may not have combo point indicators so youÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ll have to keep track of it mentally in your head. And since Life Burst is a large AoE, you donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t always have to target the weakest drake. Just pick one and slam the key and it should engulf everyone.

For the DPS and healers

Lastly is the Flame Shield mechanic. Any spell that registers combo points will work (Revivify or Flame Spike). The more combo points, the longer the shield.

YouÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ll want to use this when he targets you with a Surge of Power. Having Deadly Boss Mods installed will cue a large warning on your screen that Malygos is looking at you.

Even though he looks at you, you still have time to build up points to survive. A lot of players will panic when this happens and feel helpless.

Get a grip on yourself and calm down.

When he looks at you, there are 3 seconds before he fires his laser beams. The beams will last 5 seconds. You just need to have the shield up for a portion of it to survive. With luck, your AoE healers can still catch you while the beam is going off to help mitigate some of the damage.

Let me reiterate, you donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t have to have your shield up the entire 5 seconds to survive. So if youÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re caught with your pants down without any combo points and heÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s looking at you, fire off 2 or 3 combo point spells and hit your shield. You should be able to survive it with slight scale damage.

Reminders

Run south going into phase 3

When Malygos levels up, climb up to him and reach head level

Strafe in 90 degree increments going counter clockwise

DPS: 1-1-1-2

Healers: 3-3-3-3-3-4 and press Shift V to toggle health bars

DonÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t panic when he catches you with no combo points since you still have time

IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢m the type of player that likes to relentlessly playback previous events (or wipes) in my head. I try to see if thereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s anything I can do better from my perspective or anything I should have done differently. HereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s a 10 second mentally recalled highlight reel moment of a time that happened all too often.

We run a 6 healer setup and IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢m the only one on the Sarth tank.

0:00

Vent call: Firewall, move!

*Casts Shield, Renew, and dives narrowly avoiding a wall*

0:02

Vent call: Vesperon landing!

*Casts Penance*

0:04

Sarth tank: I have the debuff!

*Casts Flash Heal*

0:06

*Casts another Flash Heal*

0:08

His attack animation stopped and heÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s raising his head.

WAIT! HIS HEAD IS RAIS-!

0:10

Sarth tank: IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢m down!

Reflections

Thankfully, that was just earlier on in the night. After I settled in more and got into the groove, I was able to get my timing down perfectly. The problem with me was that I ended up being off in my timing.

The timing was off enough to get our tank 1 shot.

But I managed to fix it. I figured that I was zoomed in too close on my character that I had to adjust my camera more to keep my sights on Sarth. That took up precious time and added increased risk.

I managed to solve it by maxing out my camera distance so that no matter where I ran, IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢d still be able to keep an eye on his head.

FYI

I use his head as an indicator for when heÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s about to breathe. When he tilts back, thatÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s the time to use the Pain Suppression.

WhatÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s killing us

We lose 1 or 2 people to void zones in the beginning or to a Firewall. There is a bit of inconsistency. Some attempts, the raid group is able to blast through the first drake with no problem. In other cases, people are just getting sloppy or we have bad lag luck (like a player dying to a void even though theyÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re 15 yards away from it).

The second problem occurs when the third drake lands. Players are killing themselves. Going to see if that can be fixed by having Paladins Ã¢â‚¬Å“tactically bubbleÃ¢â‚¬Â at certain times to lessen the overall raid damage with that Shield talent thingy.

As for me, the 10 attempts where the raid lived long enough for Vesperon to touch down, I was able to squeeze off Pain Suppression fast enough for 7 of them.

Epic

About me

My name is Matticus and this is my World of Warcraft blog. Here you can read about my thoughts regarding healing as a priest. As a former guild master, I also write about guild and raid related topics. The blog has expanded to include thoughts from other regular contributors. The aim of this blog is to help you grow and improve. My unending goal is to have something relevant and useful in every post. or more, you can check out my columns on Blizzard Watch. Visit theGuildmasters to talk shop with other GMs, raid leaders, and officers. My current guild is on Kel'Thuzad US.